Posts tagged as:

government

10 November 2009

Once Bonded, Reloaded

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Just like Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, I penned my name on a legal document in 2000 that effectively willed 6 years of my life – after the mandatory military service and the sponsored US university education – to the Singapore Public Service.  The ‘golden ticket’ was like a dream come true – a chance for the eldest [...]

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27 July 2009

s/pores: “Once Bonded”

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I was pleasantly surprised to read Yu-Mei Balasingamchow’s introspective article on her reflections as a bonded government scholar.  These are the sort of stuff that we scholars talk a lot about in person, but are never keen to share in any form online – and understandably so, especially after the AcidFlask incident.  AcidFlask and I [...]

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26 July 2009

On PSC Chairman’s open letter and our Public Service’s purported intolerance of contradictory views

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Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairman Eddie Teo’s open letter and interview in the papers was like a breath of fresh air.  I had espoused the need for a greater human touch during Friday’s dinner, and while I’m sure this year’s more-than-2,416 PSC scholarship hopefuls who did not get picked would have wished for this killer [...]

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24 July 2009

Why I Blog

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Earlier today, WMW and I had a really engaging discussion over pots of fragrant 大红袍 tea at Tian Fu Teahouse, atop UOB Plaza 1.  It had been a while since we sat down with each other to catch up; the last time being over dinner at a restaurant along University Avenue in Palo Alto in [...]

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5 June 2009

SPRING awards 21 TECS grants in 2nd grant call, brings total to 38

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SPRING today announced that another 21 companies have been awarded the TECS POC and POV grants.  To recap, TECS stands for Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (TECS) – a S$75 million programme launched by SPRING in April 2008 “to provide technology start-ups and enterprising public-sector researchers” (i.e. A*STAR) with early-stage funding support to R&D projects either [...]

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16 May 2009

Taking Government Money, the Pain-free Way

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Earlier today at the e27 Unconference 2009 panel “Innovation in Asia and Where is it heading?” (which Bernard rightfully puts, should have been retitled as “Asia Web – Business and Markets“), Dr. Lai Kok Fong of BuzzCity advised entrepreneurs not to spend too much time trying to get government money.  I’m sure he was speaking [...]

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3 November 2008

Pump-priming Entrepreneurship in Singapore

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I had alluded to the opportunity for the Singapore Government to turn crisis into opportunity and capitalize on the downturn to stimulate the entrepreneurial landscape in Singapore in an earlier post. One such window for our government to act would be during the upcoming Budget announcement scheduled for sometime in Feb 2009, a mere 4 months [...]

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6 August 2008

‘Deep’ Engineering: an Endangered species in Singapore?

I just got off a call with a certain Google executive looking at merger-and-acquisition opportunities in Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. Google tends to prefer deals that feed into search, traffic and user generation of content. After hearing about Google’s acquisition strategy, I found myself having to come up with something smart to say after [...]

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